Serving the mass market of high-speed Internet access to small business and residential consumers with wireless technology requires either a large amount of radio spectrum or radio transmission techniques which efficiently use the radio spectrum or both. Especially in the United States it is difficult to identify a frequency band with a large amount of spectrum that is sufficiently free and designated by the Federal Communications Commission for such use. Also, the frequency band must have suitable propagation characteristics for the geography being served as well as being available and licensed for the specific application.
Another significant factor is that, as in present cellular telephone systems, power and signal levels must be restricted and reuse of frequencies managed to prevent interference amongst the spectrum users and to neighboring frequencies.
Finally, in order to be able to practically and efficiently serve a very large number of subscribers in a given geographic area (those subscribers with personal computers needing high-speed Internet connections on a wireless basis), it is necessary to provide technology that is able to be installed by the subscriber and to operate inside a building without an external antenna, provide coverage of all buildings within an area and furthermore to utilize base stations which can be easily deployed without delays due to site acquisition and environmental or zoning approvals.